Taking care of a diabetic kid is exhausting mentally, it takes a lot of thinking, you can read about that here.
Besides being a full time pancreas and nurse to Kortnie, I am also her mom first and foremost.
Not only am I her mom, but I am mom to 2 other kids, Stasia and Graham.
We all know that moms are nurses, phsycologists, chauffers, tutors, confidants, playmates, friends, disciplinarians, teachers, cooks, housekeepers, seamstress, personnal shoppers, secrataries, etc, the list goes on and on.
I am also a wife. Wives play some of the same roles as moms and then some.
I am lucky enough to be a stay at home mom and wife, but that means that all of the housekeeping, shopping, cooking, bill paying, and birthday/special occasion present buying. Brian helps, but I do most of it, I organize all of it and ask him for help when I need it.
To make extra money I babysit here at home. I love the kids I watch, sometimes it gets crazy though, I've had 11 kids here at once, that includes my own kids. I don't have that many at once very often, and when I do, it's maybe for an hour or so after school gets out. Keeping up with the different kids scheduales and what their parents owe me, takes a lot of thinking too.
I am PTO President at the school that Kortnie and Graham go to. That is a pretty big job and I probably put in at least one hour a week into it, but there are other weeks that I put in more, like the last few weeks we've had a few things going on and I have been putting in 5-10 hour weeks, a lot of the work I do for the school and PTO, I can do from home, or I can do while I have my daycare kids and Graham with me. These next few weeks after Thanksgiving will be busy with PTO and I bet I'll be doing 20-30 hours each week, at the school, not at home, I will still be able to bring Graham and the daycare kids along with me. I love being able to serve my kids at their school, I like the relationships I've built there with the staff, teachers and students. The smiles the kids give me and the thanks I get from the teachers and staff are worth the work I put in.
Brian and I are Nursery leaders at our church, on Sunday's we take care of about 20 little ones 18months-3years old for 2 hours, we do have 2 other helpers. Every other week I prepare a Sunday School lesson for them. It's nothing too major as the little ones don't need real in depth lessons. I love my little ones at church and serving there is fun but tiresome.
These are my roles in my family and in my community. I love the things I do, but sometimes I get tired too. Sometimes it is hard to keep it all together and keep myself sane. Especially when
Last night, my youngest started throwing up around 1am. I think he got up at least 15 times between 1 and 6:30am. I kept thinking how I wanted to sleep, how my husband needed to sleep so he could go to work, how of course there was no school this morning and my daycare kids weren't coming until 8am-ish and I had planned on a lazy morning with my babies. It seemed everytime I would doze back off to sleep he would get up and throw up some more. Then I started thinking about how I could keep him away from the daycare kids, I didn't want to call and cancel them at the last minute, I didn't want them to get sick, I didn't want to lose out on the money I would make today. I also need to keep him away from his sisters, I don't want them to get sick, especially Kortnie. A bug like this could land Kortnie in the hospital. Then I started thinking about how it's almost Thanksgiving and how Graham was looking so forward to Turkey Day at Grandma's house, and he's supposed to have a sleepover at Grandma's so Brian and I can do some Black Friday shopping, and how I was even going to try to make a roundtrip trip to the Phoenix Valley (180 miles each way) while Brian was at work and the kids were at Grandma's to do some shopping and now all that is up in the air. I can't leave Graham sick at Grandma's, if Kortnie gets sick I definitly can't leave her.
I am definitly having a Mental Health crazy day today. All I can do is take deep breaths and take it one minute at a time. For now, I have my girls and the daycare kids downstairs playing video games, Graham is up in my room watching TV, sleeping, and throwing up. Hoping to keep him isolated and keep the virus contained to him. Hoping for a fun relaxing family day tomorrow, hoping my kids can still have that sleepover at Grandma's and that by tonight everyone will be healthy.
When you find yourself feeling a bit crazy, sit down, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and make a game plan. Cut some stuff out if you have to, you don't have to do everything all of the time. Enjoy what's most important, your kids, your family, the ones you love.
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